A Different Kind of Monster

It often feels easier, when you can choose your own pain. 

Such as tattoos, you willingly go sit down for however many hours and feel pain. In this case you are in control because you are choosing it. 

To me it’s similar to self-sabotage, instead of something else inflicting pain on you— you’re doing it to yourself. Not everyone is conscious of when they are, but when they do it is often with the thought that at least they are the one choosing it. 

Many might wonder, why would you willingly put yourself in a situation or act in a way that will have the most consequences for you at the end of it. Honestly? It’s not that simple. If there is one thing I have learned is that things are a lot more complex than what one might understand on the surface. Two things can be true at once. 

A person putting themselves through conflict or pain is illogical, and also the person doing that is struggling. I think back on every time I have self sabotaged. When it wasn’t conscious I didn’t know how to regulate the intensity of what I felt so I chose external vices to combat how broken I felt inside. 

Now when it was conscious, I was aware of my patterns and coping mechanisms. And people around me always made sure I knew, which was never helpful but noted and later reflected on. I had a lack of self-love. A lack of self-love so deep the only way I learned was through the most painful experiences that reflected to me how far away I was from myself. And I had to go through those experiences again and again because of how slowly the lesson was coming into focus for me. 

While I had clearly been told by a tarot reader that I needed to focus on myself and practice self-love, I wasn’t ready to do that nor knew what that looked like because my whole system was trying to justify the way I had been acting. 

I don’t regret or feel shame anymore for anything that I did that was messy, because what good does making myself feel bad about myself do for me? Nothing. 

All the shame that had been placed on me for so long weighed me down tremendously. 

I’ve had my karma, I’ve apologized and taken accountability for my mistakes, but I will never apologize for very clearly struggling. 

There are those that notice someone struggling and help them. 

There are those that notice someone is struggling and help them, then stop involving themselves because someone’s destruction is too affecting of others.

And then there are those that notice someone is struggling, comment— judge them for it, and stand idly by. 

Then continue to shame them for their past behaviour afterwards.

I have primarily dealt with the third type of person. 

You see, while I may have acted out in ways that were self destructive— once I was conscious of it, it became a different kind of monster. Consciousness of it though does not equal weakness, or evil. 

It’s the kind of monster where you are wanting to stop your behaviour, but the chains to what caused you and weirdly rewarded your behaviour, (making it worth it in your mind) have become tighter. For the simple reason that, the reminders for why you’re doing it in the first place start to imprison you. 

It’s not that you can’t simply quit if you wanted, it's that you have to fight those conditioned ways and find something else “more worth” quitting for. Some people just get exhausted and have enough, but some slowly realize there is more to life. 

The current habits they have been exhibiting are no longer serving them.